North and South groceries

Seeing that his piglets survived well, Luo Yong also breathed a sigh of relief.

As for the method of pigs, he only heard about it once when he was having dinner at a fellow villager’s house, but now he is asked to do it himself, and he feels quite uneasy. On the one hand, and more importantly, he was worried that he would kill all the piglets in his family.

As a result, he tried it out, but he didn't expect it to be very smooth, so he also slaughtered the remaining pigs, and his plan to divide them into several batches was also thrown out of the sky.

Sure enough, he was more talented in pig breeding than painting.Luo Sanlang thought so in his heart.

Speaking of painting, Luo Yong is still competing with peony recently. In the past two days, he made another wool felt mat with peony pattern, which is somewhat better than the original one, but he is still not satisfied.

"Brother, it's time to feed the pigs!" Outside the yard, Luo Wulang shouted loudly.

"Here we come." Luo Yong put down his brush, got up and left the house, and saw that Goro was already waiting for him in the yard with a basket of dried bean dregs. A small piece of bean curd residue.

These bean dregs were exchanged from the villagers in the past few days. As soon as they heard that Luo Yong started to collect bean dregs here, the villagers picked up the bean dregs they had saved here one by one, and exchanged them for the soy sauce beans. The fermented bean curd in sauce is not only enough for the family to eat, but relatives and friends also gave some.

The ones drying in the yard are just fresh bean dregs, but there are still a lot of dried bean dregs piled up in a certain room in the backyard of the Luo family.From the amount of bean dregs, it can be seen that the tofu business in their village is really doing well.

"Si Niang, stay at home and watch Liu Lang Qiniang." Er Niang also came out from the kitchen with two wooden barrels at this time.

"Oh." Si Niang replied reluctantly, yesterday was Wu Lang's housekeeper, and today it's her turn, and she really wants to feed the pigs with everyone...

Originally, feeding pigs should be a hard job, but the children in the family make it look like an outing, which is a bit funny to say.

The weather these days is very good. The sun has been shining for several days in a row. The thick snow outside has gradually melted. There are still some small snowdrifts on the slope that have not been completely melted. It seems that it will not last long. .

There is still a bit of coldness in the wind blowing in front of you, but it is not as cold as winter, which can almost freeze people to the bone.When Luo Yong first came here, it was still early winter, and in a blink of an eye, after a winter, spring has arrived.

Er Niang went to the village to fetch water with her bucket alone.

Luo Yong put some wheat husk chaff into Wulang's basket: "Can you still carry it?"

"It's easy to lift." Goro said with his neck raised.

"Okay, then you go first." Luo patted him on the back with his hand, and let Goro go first. He still had to carry some firewood himself. The firewood carried a few days ago was almost burned. Not enough to burn another pig meal.

Wulang carried the basket and walked out of the yard on short legs. Mai Qingdouli ran forward and back barkingly. Siniang stood at the gate of the courtyard and Doulier yelled several times, but Doulier did not look back. Just run away.

"I'm telling you to take care of yourself, isn't it difficult to speak right now?" Luo Yong couldn't help being happy when he saw this scene.

"..." Si Niang sniffed, and went back to the canteen with her little shoulders down.

When Luo Yong went to the pigpen with a stick of firewood on his back, he saw Wulang adding straw to the several pigpens.

At this time, the pigsty could not be made into a concrete floor for easy washing, so we had to add straw to it, and some dry straw was added every day, and it was cleaned thoroughly every once in a while. The straw and pig manure cleaned out could be used to fertilize the field.

As long as he thinks of the process of cleaning the pigsty, Luo Yong can't help but frown. In this era when there are no rubber products, but there are not even a pair of water shoes. In order not to spoil the cloth shoes, he can only wear straw sandals or I went in barefoot.

Fortunately, this place has a slight slope. When Luo Yong was repairing the pigsty, he built the side near the exit at a high place on a gentle slope, and the back of the pigsty was at a low place. Someone helped to dig a ditch, and then the sewage in the pigsty can flow into the ditch by itself. In this way, the frequency of cleaning the pigsty can be slightly reduced. The sewage in the ditch is scooped up and mixed with clean water. It can be directly carried to water the ground.

Luo Yong put down the firewood and went over to sprinkle straw into the pigsty with Wu Lang.

There is a waxy layer on the surface of the straw, which is not easy to decompose, and it is not good to use it directly to fertilize the field. However, if they are thrown into the pig pen, soaked in pig manure and urine for a few days, they will be trampled by the pigs inside every day. After walking around, when the pigs come out of the pen again, the wax layer has basically been decomposed, and a little composting and retting will be a very good fertilizer.

After the two brothers had added straw to several pigpens, Er Niang also came over with a load of water.

Several people were cooking pig food in a small shed next to the pigsty.At the beginning, the villagers were very puzzled by their behavior of cooking pig food. In their local area, pigs ate raw food, but how could it be changed to Luo Sanlang's house, and they had to cook for them like humans.

Luo Yong said that those boars had just been castrated by him, and he was afraid that they would be difficult to raise, so he cooked some hot food for them.

As soon as this word got out, many people said that Luo Sanlang was really soft-hearted. Don’t those pigs look good? They are still alive and kicking without two balls. The injured generally take care of them.

No matter what others say, the brothers and sisters of the Luo family still have to cook two meals of pig food for these piglets every day.

While it was cooking, Er Niang suddenly remembered something, and ran home to bring some dried vegetables: "It's spring, these dried vegetables are no longer needed, let's give them to the pigs."

"Okay." Luo Yong took the dried vegetables, smashed them into pieces and threw them into the pot, cooking them together with the bean dregs and wheat husks.

These dried vegetables were picked by Erniang and Siniang in the nearby slopes in the summer and autumn of last year.At that time, they summed up that their own food probably wasn't enough to survive this winter, and they picked more wild vegetables and dried them, so that they would be able to fill their stomachs by then.

Later, Luo Yong woke up and made tofu at home, so they didn’t eat these dried vegetables very much, and occasionally ate a little, but they all picked up the tender ones and ate them all as side dishes. Now that spring is here, so many vegetables are useless , Just use it to raise pigs.

As the hot air from the pot wafted out, the piglets in the pen began to whine and scream, and each of them pressed their heads against the wooden fence, trying to get out of it.

The eight piglets can be eaten together, and one big pot of pig food is not enough, so two pots have to be cooked.

The siblings cook pig food there. On the village road not far away, occasionally familiar villagers pass by, and they will stop to say hello to them, or simply come over to talk to them, and look at the pigs by the way. Cub's.

The villagers all said that spring is about to begin, and they want to make more tofu for sale now. When the farming season is busy, the family will not be able to spare manpower to do this, and it may have to stop for a few days. It is a pity, but it is a pity. The work in the field must not be delayed.

Farmers are unwilling to delay farming, especially many elderly people in their villages came from the war years, and they regard food as life.

Luo Yong and they also have to farm, but he came from a later life, unlike the people here who value food as much.Besides, even if he doesn't know much about history, he still knows the rule of Zhenguan, and he knows that in the past 20 years, it is not very likely that people will starve to death.

The Luo family used to have dozens of acres of land, but in the first half of last year, it was almost sold out. Now there are only a dozen or so acres left, of which five acres are planted with winter wheat. It will not be harvested until May and June.

For the other few mu of land, Luo Yong planned to plant all of them with corn. Firstly, their main ration now was corn flour. Secondly, when paying taxes, they also had to hand over a lot of corn.

As for vegetables, it is enough to open a few vegetable plots next to the pigsty, and it is not enough to eat vegetables anyway.

"Then we won't grow hemp? You have to pay taxes for that." Erniang said worriedly.

"I won't grow hemp, so you can weave a few more pairs of socks, and you don't have to worry about the money." Luo Yong said, "Be careful in the future. If there are cheap and good cloth, buy some and put them at home." .”

"Then it's up to you." Not planting hemp or twisting hemp thread, this has never happened in their Luo family, Erniang always feels a little bit at a loss, but since Sanlang said so, let's do it , since Saburo woke up, life at home has been getting better day by day, it must be right to listen to him.

Luo Yong also knew that the ability of farmers to bear risks at this time is very poor, so those who eat and wear can make them at home, so that they will not die of hunger or freezing.

It's just that their family's labor force is limited after all. After doing one thing, there must be no manpower to do that one thing, so there is a choice.

·

Before the snow in the field had completely melted away, anxious villagers began to plow the land, and for a while, cattle became in short supply.

Just when Luo Yong was thinking about whether to go to Lin's house to ask his brother-in-law to borrow cattle, Zhao Dalang from Shuozhou came.

After Zhao Chen returned to Shuozhou in the first month, he started to collect wool. Seeing that he had almost accumulated enough wool, he brought the wool over first, and exchanged some fermented bean curd first, so that his father would not tell him about it all day long. Things don't work out at all.

The animals he used to transport the wool were neither cows nor horses, but a group of big donkeys. Luo Sanlang smiled when he saw the group of donkeys.

"Why don't you use a bullock cart?" Luo Sanlang smiled and stretched out his hand to touch the neck of a big donkey. He saw that it was the strongest among the group of donkeys.

"I'm afraid that the spring plowing will be delayed, so those cows are left at home." Zhao Chen and his family don't just rely on selling animals, they also have a large manor, which can produce a lot of grain every year.

"The donkey is also good." Luo Sanlang said sincerely.

"All the wool I shipped this time will be replaced with fermented bean curd." Zhao Chen said.Recently in their Shuozhou side, someone also heard about fermented bean curd from Taiyuan City. At this time, he exchanged a batch of fermented bean curd from Luoyong and returned, hoping to get a lot of money and food in exchange.

"Okay, no problem." It just so happened that Luo Yong has made a lot of fermented bean curd recently, so he is not worried about running out of stock.

After the two finished the wool-for-fermented bean curd deal, Luo Yong enthusiastically gave Zhao Chen a jar of bean paste and a jar of soy sauce, and then talked about the donkey with him.

It just so happened that when Zhao Chen came back to Luo's house this time, he fell in love with something new. When he just entered the yard, he saw a few children holding wooden sticks on a brightly colored mat and kept poking it. Look, that thing turned out to be wool felt.

Wool felt is common on the grasslands, and he often saw it in Shuozhou, but the color and pattern were nothing compared to the wool felt he had seen before.It's not that Zhao Chen doesn't know the goods, not to mention other things, but the cost of dyeing, presumably Luo Sanlang spent a lot of money.

"Saburo wants to buy a donkey? Which one did you fancy just now, but a donkey." Zhao Chen said.

"Ah?" Luo Yong couldn't react for a moment, and he also knew that the guy he just saw was a donkey, not a horse, and not even a cow.

"The first donkey is the leader of that group of donkeys." Zhao Chen explained to him.

"Oh..." Luo Yong nodded, no wonder the donkey he looked at just now was the most airy among the donkeys, and it turned out to be the leader.

"That's a good donkey, and it's well-known throughout Shuozhou City." Famous is famous, but it's hard to say whether it has a good reputation or not.

That donkey was notoriously capricious in Shuozhou City, and it couldn't be sold at a good price locally. Zhao Chen brought him out this time because he wanted to sell it.It is reasonable to say that such a good donkey should be kept as a breeding donkey, but many local herdsmen said that the donkeys bred from such a breeding donkey might be a bunch of thorns, so they refused to pay a high price.

"How much do you plan to sell that donkey?" Luo Yong looked at the donkey very pleasing to the eye.

"Give me five pairs of cushions like the one just now." Zhao Chen asked for a price.

"Okay, five pairs is five pairs." Luo Yong was also very talkative this time, "That's right now, my family happens to be short of such a donkey, otherwise, I'm going to sell those mats for a hundred yuan each."

With the current purchasing power of coins, the donkey should not be sold for less than [-] Wen.It's just that, when doing business, you can't be watertight everywhere, you can take advantage of any advantages, and occasionally you should make the other party happy, otherwise, how can the business last for a long time.

Zhao Dalang was very happy to get these pairs of cushions, he would take them out for a second look if he had nothing to do, such bright colors, such beautiful patterns, if he brought them back to Shuozhou, someone would be willing to pay a high price to buy them, but he If Yeniang Weng Po likes it, it's good to keep it at home.

As for the donkeys, what did he do with so many donkeys? Not only did he want to sell one donkey, but he also planned to sell some of the other donkeys.When they came here, each donkey needed dozens of catties of wool, and when they returned, there were only a few catties of fermented bean curd left, so there was no need for so many donkeys.

The price of donkeys in Lishi County is much higher than that in Shuozhou.During this trip, he originally planned to do two transactions, one for wool and one for donkeys.

·

Luo Sanlang: I never expected that those cushions would be sold just like that.

With the maturity of his skills, he now looks at the first few cushions he made, which are getting rougher and rougher. He didn't expect to be able to exchange for a big donkey, which was a surprise.